


Holy Magics

by Aithilin



Series: Fresh Start [9]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Bittersweet, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 04:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10846290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Some memories were easier to affect than others.





	Holy Magics

He would never have admitted it, but Ignis was glad that he was blind when the dawn came. When he had entered the Citadel— bloody, bruised, almost broken— with Gladiolus and Prompto, and he couldn’t see what had happened. He could hear it, of course. Hear the way Prompto dropped to his knees in his shock. Hear the way Gladio moved up the steps to the throne. 

Hear the sword being pulled free. The metal ringing in the silence as Gladio tossed it aside like it burned, like it wasn’t a king’s relic, a Royal Arm they had suffered to collect for their prince. Their king. He could hear the hitch in breath, the soft despair of his friends. 

It had all passed so quickly. So fluidly. He remembered the noise, the loss of warmth when he touched Noct’s body, and then he supposed it was wishful thinking when he misremembered the sudden alleviation of grief. The pained gasp of returning life, the wet, tearful babble from Prompto and the soft utterances from Gladio. He supposed the sound of Noct’s voice, the warmth beneath his hand, the return of it all was just a good dream he had tried to give himself. 

He never imagined he would have to see the way the body fell into Gladio’s arms, the way Noct still looked so small, and young stretched out on the floor before them. He never thought that his mind would be so cruel as to conjure up those images of Noct on his throne, dead before they could reach him to help. 

Yet here he was, standing in the dark ruins of the Citadel, as he imagined it must have looked after ten years of neglect and chaos and infestation. Here he was, in once familiar stone halls, the gold and gild long since gone and the Crystal he had rarely seen before suspended above the throne he had sworn himself to. Above the body of the prince, the king, he had sworn his life to. Every oath and promise dead at the dead king’s feet. 

“Noct…” He understood the shock, the days of silence afterwards, the reasons why neither Prompto nor Gladio could set foot in the throne room now, even after they had it rebuilt. He understood what they must see each time, as he climbed those steps in Gladio’s place and closed his eyes as he pulled the sword free. 

Even in his dreams, his voice echoed against the stone walls and steps. 

“Noct, please…”

The flash of blue-grey, the little figure he knew from Noct’s childhood stories, from happier times, was a new addition. He knew Carbuncle through Noct, through memories of his friend, an animated and smiling child telling him about their adventures in his dreams. He knew Carbuncle through his own research, his own wariness to trust any fairy story creature passing itself off as an Astral. He knew the little creature through his friend’s love for it. 

He knew what Carbuncle was capable of. 

“I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to be here.” 

The little figure simply sat across from him, watching him over Noct’s body Iggy held. “Please.”

They didn’t have phones then, in the ruins in Insomnia. There had been no need for them. No need when the services and signals were lost years before Noct returned to them for a night. But his phone buzzed and chimed in his pocket, and the little creature didn’t move. 

_Don’t you remember the spells you used?_

There were spells— ancient things, passed through Oracles, and folklore— Ignis had tried to research when he was younger, when Noct first disappeared into the Crystal. There were the runes that had protected the havens, the markings that glowed under the moonlight to shield weary travellers in the dark. There was magic older than the lines of the kings and queens of Eos, spells older than the Crystal’s appearance. 

Every time he had these dreams, it was the same. He would be asked if he remembered and he’d wake to a different kind of darkness. He would wake shaking, confused, Prompto’s kind words drawing him back to the world. Every morning, after these dreams, after thinking on the little creature’s words, on the image seared into his mind of Noct in his arms, Ignis would struggle to refocus. He could remember studying the old spells, the ones lost to the havens and darkness the “white magic” as it was called rather than the elemancy Noct had been gifted. He could remember the years of study, with Prompto and Talcott reading what text they could find and salvage to him, and the hope that he would one day be able to break the hold the Crystal had on his king, his friend. 

“Jeez, Iggy, you’re going to need to cast Raise on this if it’s going to be edible,” Prompto said once the distraction proved too much and their meal had suffered for it. “You okay?”

“Raise?”

“Yeah, I mean, that might cause some questions about the scrambled eggs, but—”

The weight of the memory was crushing. He had remembered that spell, the way it tore through him in the Citadel, the panic in Prompto’s voice, in Gladio’s voice as he cast it in desperation. He remembered the pain of it, the tearing, searing, gutting wrench of it as he forced the ancient spell from theory into practice. He remembered the heat of the Crystal burning with the force— the Lucii having only been granted a fragment of white magic in Holy, and even then it had been fickle and trying at the best of times. He remembered the collapse of it as he evoked magics that were meant to heal and cure and realised why they were lost to the depths of Solheim and ancient theory. 

White Magic fucking _hurt_. 

But he remembered. 

He was in bed when he regained consciousness, the tangle of lives and memories in his mind trying to straighten themselves out. Trying to match what was real and what was the work of a divine creature he wished he could banish to hell himself. 

“Iggy! You okay?” Prompto’s worried voice was close, his footsteps leading him to the bedside as Ignis pulled himself up. “What the hell? What happened?”

“Prompto, I need your phone. Dial Nyx.”


End file.
